Malignant
by WriterExtraordinaire
Summary: When Jess becomes sick with cancer, Sam does everything he can to take care of her and make her life comfortable and stay positive, but as the once happy, vibrant girl he loves becomes a hollow, broken shell, it becomes harder and harder for him to do so.


The walls of the waiting room were white and the chairs were made of black leather. In between every three or four chairs, was an end table made of mahogany with a glass top, framed by glass and covered in magazines that were at least two months old. In a shelf near the room's exit, were some children's books that had pages ripped out and crayon streaks over the pictures. Next to the shelf was a table covered in broken toys and one of those contraptions that had painted wires with beads strung on them. This particular office wasn't one children visited often and when they did they were curled against their parents, trying not to be afraid because, even at that young age, they knew having cancer was a bad thing. Being in this office was a bad thing. If you'd gotten this far, it was either a false alarm or you were in trouble.

Jessica Moore sat in this waiting room, struggling to avoid the antiseptic smell that wafted from the hospital's hallway outside, trying to forget that the reason she was here was because this was the last stop in a long line of waiting rooms that she'd been through today. She'd arrived at the hospital around ten in the morning because she wanted to talk to a doctor about the pains she'd been having in her chest recently and the fact that she sometimes had trouble breathing. The doctor had asked her symptoms and sent her somewhere else. She'd gotten some tests done there and then was sent to another doctor and another and another, until her arms were sore and covered in Band-Aids and cotton balls from how many needles had been stuck in them in the past seven hours.

Her fingers, curled tightly around Sam Winchester's, tightened. She glanced around the room that was too full. There were a few children sitting in the corners with scared looking parents. On the edges, there were husbands and wives, holding hands, hoping that their fears were nothing more than paranoia and the tests they'd been through during the day were just precursors to a man in a white coating telling them they were alright instead of that they were sick. Scattered here and there were elderly men and women, knowing this was a long time coming and not expecting to be told they were going to survive a little longer without contracting the disease that would kill them.

Out of all the people there, Jessica Moore was the only one of her age.

_People at twenty-one don't get cancer, _she told herself. _This is probably just a false alarm. I just have pneumonia or something. This has all been a mistake. _

But she knew it wasn't.

People at twenty-one didn't get cancer. In fact, people at twenty-one didn't even show symptoms of cancer. But when they did, when they got as far into the tests as she had, there was cause to be afraid. Always.

She felt long, sure fingers curl around her free hand and she blinked. Sam was pulling her hand away from her mouth. She stared at her ragged fingernails and realized she must've been biting them without noticing it. He laced their fingers together, placed their hands in his lap and kissed her temple.

"Don't get yourself worked up," he said softly, pressing his forehead to the space where his lips had been only a moment before. "You don't even know the results yet. It could be nothing." He ran his hand across the back of her palm. "Even if it is, you can't change that by worrying now."

Jess leaned into his touch, knowing he was right, but unable to stop herself from being worried all the same. She was just opening her mouth to say something else when the door to the doctor's office opened. A woman came out with a relieved look on her face. She thanked the doctor before leaving the waiting room, her husband behind her, smiling, both with a spring in their step. Jess was smiling, too, thinking that maybe she had a chance at being alright when she heard her name called. Her smile vanished and her fear returned. Sam didn't seem to notice her sudden return to discomfort. Either that or he was pretending not to, since he stood, pulling her with him, and they both walked into the office.

The office was very different from the waiting room. First off, it wasn't very big. It was even a little smaller than their bedroom at home. There was a large mahogany desk that took up most of the room. It had a laptop at its center that was currently open. Surrounding the laptop were containers holding pens, folders holding papers, and baskets that the folders and papers were meant to be placed in. Behind the desk were a couple bookshelves, full of medical journals, books on various illnesses, and multiple medical and regular dictionaries. Next to the bookshelves was a fern of some sort and next to that was a large, industrial-sized printer. In front of the desk were two black leather chairs that the doctor gestured to as he came around the desk after shutting the door.

"Please, sit down," he said, a smile on his face.

They did, keeping their fingers intertwined, but Jess felt like she would feel better if she were standing, no matter what the news was.

"I'm going to get right to it," the doctor said in a way that Jess was sure he'd said it at least ten times that day. She thought about all of the people in the waiting room. He was going to have to say it at least twenty or thirty more times before the day was over. "Your test results came back positive." There was a short silence before the doctor added, "You have metastasized papillary thyroid cancer."

The world slowed down tenfold. The doctor's lips, Sam tightening his fingers around hers, the second hand on the clock above the desk, the dust particles falling through the sunlight to the carpet, _everything_ was moving ten times slower. Jess blinked and it took her an hour to do so. She turned her head to look at Sam and it took her nearly a day. She took a shuddering breath and by the time she let it out, a week had passed.

She knew what the doctor had said.

She knew every word by heart already.

She had cancer. _Metastasized _cancer. The likelihood of her surviving was less than fifty percent. She reached her fingers up to her head as the doctor talked about the different kinds of treatments she could undergo to reduce the tumors to operable size. She toyed with the ends of her hair as the doctor explained how she was going to need a thyroidectomy fairly soon to better her chances of survival. She thought about how she would soon look in the mirror and see a girl with no hair as the doctor said they could start scheduling her chemotherapy appointments now. She glanced to her left where Sam was, listening to every word the doctor had to say, ready to do anything and everything to help her survive, even though he really didn't understand that she probably wasn't going to survive. She was going to get sick and sicker and she was going to die. It didn't matter that he was writing down the days she could go to chemotherapy. It didn't matter that she _would _go only to be sick and in pain and tired and nauseous constantly. In the end, the result would be the same. She would die and Sam would be alone.

"Thank you for your time," she heard Sam say. She was snapped out of her thoughts long enough to force a smile onto her lips and murmur the same words, before Sam ushered her out of the room, the doctor following behind them calling the names of the next people whose fate he would determine. They stopped at the gift shop in the hospital to pick up a wheelchair and an oxygen tank at the doctor's suggestion, but it wasn't until they were in the car and almost back to their apartment that the silence that had filled the air between them was broken by Sam.

"So, your first chemotherapy session is on Wednesday at noon, which is right after morning classes, so I'm guessing you'll stay home that day," he said, glancing at her as he turned off the freeway. "I'll pick you up and take you to the hospital and skip my afternoon classes so I can stay with you at the hospital. The doctor said that the first time you go through chemotherapy you're pretty sick afterwards, so they'll want to check you into the hospital for the night in case anything goes wrong. I'll stay until they kick me out and just do my homework while you sleep. I'm guessing you'll be tired." He turned onto their street. "Your first surgery is at the end of the month. I say first because the doctor said that depending on how big the tumor is they might have to operate more than once to get all of it. However, there are still the tumors in your lungs, so that's going to be a problem…they'll be the reason you go through chemo. Hopefully they'll disappear altogether because of the chemo. The doctor said it'd be too risky to operate on your lungs and try to get them all out…"

He trailed off and swallowed hard. He was doing a good job of keeping up the mask, pretending that everything was okay, that this was just a job or something like that, but Jess had been dating Sam for a year and a half now and she knew that, though he wasn't showing it, he was freaking out just as much as she was. It wasn't until they got into their apartment and the door was closed that she responded, saying, "Sam…none of this is going to work. I'm still going to die no matter what they do."

Sam, who had been in the middle of taking off his jacket and hanging it on the rack next to the door, froze. He blinked, swallowed, dropped the jacket onto the hook, and turned to face her a hard expression on his face. He went over to her, wrapped her in his arms. For a while he said nothing. He only held her close against him, his fingers curled in the hair at the base of her neck. Jess wrapped her arms around him in turn, running her hands up his back, her own fingers clutching at him, begging him without saying anything to make this all better, to change it, to make it okay, even though they both knew he couldn't. Then, so softly she almost wasn't sure he was speaking at first, Sam whispered, "Don't say that, Jess…please…don't-don't say that ever again. The _last _thing I want to do right now is imagine life without you. All I've got is the hope that these treatments will do something…that they'll help you…please…please don't take that away from me."

They stayed that way for a while, wrapped in each other, the only thing between them hopes that weren't really founded and promises they weren't really sure they could keep. Jess closed her eyes and relaxed in Sam's embrace. She knew that if she wanted to, if she let herself, she could fall asleep right here.

But she didn't. She pulled back finally and took Sam's hands in her own, but didn't look into his eyes as she said, her own voice just as soft as his had been, "I want you to shave my head, Sam."

"Jess –" Sam began, the tone of protest already in his voice, but she cut him off.

"No, listen," she said, glancing up at him briefly. "I'm going to lose my hair anyway and I'd rather it be now on my own terms than later in the shower when I'm trying to wash it, wondering if today will finally be the day I lose it." She swallowed hard. "Please…I don't have much control over this situation…actually, I basically have none…but I do have control over this and I-I wa – _need _you to do this."

There was a short silence during which Sam stared at her, into the bright green eyes of the woman he'd fallen in love with a year and a half ago and thought about what it would mean once he took their buzzcut razor to her beautiful golden locks. She was proud of them, he knew. She often enjoyed fixing up her hair in different styles just for fun and now she wouldn't be able to do that anymore. She would only be able to stare sadly at herself in the mirror and dream of something that she could potentially never do again. Just the thought of the expression she would potentially have on her face when she did this made a lump form in Sam's throat. However, her argument had been sound and was completely logical. She _didn't _have much choice in this. The least he could do was this.

"Okay," he said, his voice heavy. He watched her traipse off to the bathroom to retrieve the razor. He pulled a stool out from their kitchen and set it in the middle of the room, clearing a space for all of her hair to fall, so the cleanup would be easier. He didn't want to see the floor covered in the spun gold of her hair, but he'd made up his mind to help her and if this was how he could do it, then he would.

Jess handed Sam the razor and sat on the stool. He flipped it on and for a minute stared at it. It felt so heavy in his hands. The teeth vibrated and in Sam's current state of mind, it sounded like maniacal laughter.

_This is the beginning of the end, _the laughter told him. _This time next year she'll be gone._

He refused to believe that. He wouldn't. He _couldn't_. She was everything he'd ever wanted in his life and more. He was _not _going to lose her, not to some stupid disease like cancer.

_Lots of people die of cancer, _the laughing razor told him as he began dragging it through her hair, watching the locks fall to the hardwood beneath the stool. _She won't be any exception to any of the rules. _

But lots of people also survived cancer. That was what it was forgetting. And he was going to make sure that she survived.

Sam was so absorbed in his thoughts that he hardly noticed all of Jess's hair was suddenly gone. The last bit of it had fallen into his palm. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger and watched as the individual strands fell to the ground. He took a shuddering breath as the full reality of it hit him. Never again would he run his fingers through Jess's hair at night, telling her he loved her. Never again would he knot his hand at the base of her neck and hold her against him as they were making love. Never again would he come up behind her and press his nose into her hair, smelling whatever shampoo she'd just used.

_Not until she's better, _he reminded himself. This wasn't 'never again'. This was all only temporary. Just until she got better. Then everything would go back to the way it was before.

Jess slowly got off the stool and stared at the hair surrounding it. She stared at Sam, looking so lost from his position behind the stool. He was still rubbing the last of hair between his fingers and, for the first time in a long time, she wondered what was going through his mind. She wondered if maybe she shouldn't have made him shave her head, maybe she should've done it herself. She moved towards him tentatively and watched as a single tear from the ones that had been welling in his eyes slowly made its way down his cheek. She reached up a trembling hand to swipe it away with her thumb. She took his face in his hands, forcing his eyes to focus on her, looking far more sick now than she had ten minutes ago. She forced a smile onto her lips – something she knew she was going to be doing a lot lately – as she said softly, "Thank you, Sam."

After a moment, she moved away from him and towards the place where they'd left the oxygen tank and the wheelchair, just inside the door. She grabbed the box that held the oxygen tank and, with difficulty, maneuvered it closer to where Sam stood. She grabbed a knife and opened the box. The both of them managed to get the oxygen tank onto the small cart where it would remain unless she was in her wheelchair. They'd provided a pouch that could easily be hooked up to it if the occasion ever arose. There was a tube protruding from the oxygen tank. A nasal cannula it was called. She lifted it and said, "Sam, can you help me?"

Without a word, Sam fixed the cannula under her nose and behind her ears. He set the flow regulator to what the doctor had told him it would need to be to start out when they were at the hospital and gave her a weary smile before asking, "How's that?"

"Perfect," Jess replied after taking a deep breath through the nose, already able to tell the difference. She glanced towards the door and said, suddenly and excitedly, "How about we go out for dinner?" She knit her fingers in his shirt just below his collar. She grinned. "We can go to Denny's or IHOP. They serve breakfast 24/7 and I want some pancakes."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked, taking in her appearance. She definitely looked the part of girl-with-cancer now.

Jess nodded. "Of course, I'm sure," she replied, suddenly her same old self again. She yawned and thought about how nice a warm bed would be right then.

"Why don't you lay down?" Sam said, immediately picking up on her exhaustion. "I'll clean up and then we can go. How about that?" Now it was his turn to force a smile.

"Sounds good," she said, suddenly very sleepy. She dragged her oxygen tank on its cart to their bedroom, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, still fully dressed. She watched as Sam cleaned up her hair, sweeping it into a dustpan before dumping it into the garbage can in the kitchen. She watched him do this twice before her eyes finally drooped closed and she fell completely into unconsciousness.

It took Sam longer than he would have liked to clean up all of Jess's hair. He filled the dustpan three or four times with her hair before the kitchen floor was finally looking the same as it had been before, if a little cleaner. He was certain there were still strands of hair. Probably ones he couldn't see and wouldn't see until much later when he was sweeping or one got caught on his foot or he dropped some food and it came up when he picked it up.

He sighed. He supposed it didn't matter at the moment. Jess had bald now. She needed oxygen to breathe properly. Oh, and this was all because she had cancer.

_How could this happen? _He thought as he headed towards their bedroom. _How could she get cancer? She's never smoked or done anything that would allow her to get it. How in the world could she have gotten cancer?_

It didn't make any sense. Not to him, not to her, not to anyone.

He opened the door to their bedroom and, instead of seeing a girl who was so eager to go out to dinner less than fifteen minutes ago, he saw a sick girl sleeping on the bed they shared, her light snore gone, since she now had enough oxygen in her lungs to keep her from doing this in the first place.

Sam sat down next to her on his side of the bed, wanting to touch her and, at the same time, afraid that if he did, she would crack and shatter. She looked so fragile now, so small. Already she looked like she was sick and dying, even though they'd literally found out she was ill less than an hour ago. But perhaps it was because it just felt much longer than that. Either way it didn't matter. The fact remained Jess was sick and she was only going to get worse before she, in any way, got better.

Suddenly, tears were falling down Sam's cheeks. He tried to stop them, tried to tell himself that he couldn't cry now. Jess was sleeping and he couldn't wake her, but this seemed to make the tears flow even faster and before he knew it, he was sobbing. He clutched at her and sobbed into her shoulder, telling her over and over again that he was sorry, even though he knew that this wasn't his fault in any way.

He half expected her to wake up, to wrap her arms around his upper body and tell him that everything was going to be alright, even though she didn't believe it, even though she was certain she was going to die, even though he knew she would no longer say it to him. But she didn't. She stayed sound asleep. Eventually Sam fell asleep too and for a few blissful hours, Sam forgot about everything. For a short, short time, Sam forgot that his life was going to shit again, that he could lose the person who had, at last, given his life meaning.

For a short, short time, Sam was lost in dreamland and there, he was happy.


End file.
